The Patrick MacGill Summer School has been in existence for twenty-nine years. It was founded in 1981 in Glenties to celebrate the memory of local writer, Patrick MacGill, whose work on the plight of emigrant workers in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century and on the horrors of the Great War in which he fought are still being published and read. The School has, in that time, brought together speakers representing all walks of public life in Ireland – North and South – to analyse and debate topics of major national interest.